April 11 (Bloomberg) -- AstraZeneca Plc’s long-term senior
unsecured debt rating was cut by Moody’s Investors Service to A2
from A1 on concern that earnings and sales will be hurt as it
loses patent protection on some of its best-selling medicines.

Moody’s left the short-term rating unchanged at Prime-1
with a stable outlook. AstraZeneca has maintained a “very
strong liquidity profile” with cash and equivalents of $7.7
billion at the end of 2012 and long-term committed bank
facilities of $3 billion, it said in a statement. The company
has 5.9 billion pounds of debt outstanding, according to data
compiled by Bloomberg.

AstraZeneca, the U.K.’s second-biggest drugmaker, will soon
lose patent protection on blockbusters such as the cholesterol
treatment Crestor, which had sales of $6.3 billion last year.
Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot has said he wants to focus
on product licensing and the company’s own drug-development
efforts to return to growth.

Any improvement in AstraZeneca’s “currently modest
pipeline will take time to materialize” and sales from recently
launched drugs won’t be able to offset the revenue decline,
Marie Fischer-Sabatie, senior credit officer and lead analyst
for AstraZeneca at Moody’s, said in the statement today.

Standard & Poor’s revised its outlook on the company’s debt
on April 8 to negative from stable, citing a “strong revenue
decline” that could ultimately lead to a downgrade.